Nora
by Emily-in-the-glass
Summary: Little Elizabeth receives a letter from fairyland one day. A Paul Irving and Little Elizabeth fanfic.
1. The Letter

_A/N: Inspired by EstellaB's Paul/Elizabeth fic, and rubygillis's Bertha of Green Gables, I remembered I had been hatching my own Paul/Elizabeth fanfiction for a long time. I decided it's time to dust it off and present it in its full glory. _

Windermere was a dark mahogany mansion on a quiet, stately street in Boston. With its ponderous woodwork walls and innumerable oil-portraits in gilt frames -- monuments to the company's founders hearkening back a hundred years, -- Elizabeth Grayson marvelled that the old feelings of oppression did not permeate the rooms in the same way the Evergreens was musty with Yesterday. Perhaps the mellow sunlight, falling amply through the wide old windows and scattering living tapestries over wallpaper and carpet, dispelled all lurking ghosts and cobwebs. When the sunrise made a spectacle of rose-red hues in Elizabeth's room, such that she awoke to a sunbeam falling athwart the map of fairyland on her wall, Little Elizabeth greeted the young morning with especial expectancy. 

On such days Elizabeth was wont to receive letters from Miss Shirley. The correspondence was Anne and Elizabeth's manna for fairyland -- Elizabeth always thrilled to open a letter full of joyous news and gossamer sketches of a realm neither of them would ever leave behind. She tore open the pretty seal and removed the bulky contents, and then sat down in surprise to see a script she did not recognize.

There were only a few pages without address or date. Little Elizabeth glanced over the fragments involuntarily, and then read as one spellbound:

"At the end of the day I found myself by the beach. The shore was engoldened by the setting sun, and I could taste the sea air on my breath. It brought to mind my childhood fantasy of a voyage into sunset land. I sat down and scribbled the following verse:

_"We shall launch our shallop on waters blue from some dim primrose shore,  
We shall sail with the magic of dusk behind and enchanted coasts before,  
Over oceans that stretch to the sunset land where lost Atlantis lies,  
And our pilot shall be the vesper star that shines in the amber skies._

"Do you remember Nora, teacher? Dark of hair and white of skin, with the sea in her eyes - my dearest friend as a boy, really, until you came - I am sad to have left her behind on the shores of my Island childhood. Sometimes, I fancy myself in love with her still - if only because, as they say - a poet needs a muse.

_"The sirens will call to us again, all sweet and demon-fair,  
And a pale mermaiden will beckon us, with mist on her night-black hair;  
We shall see the flash of her ivory arms, her mocking and luring face,  
And her guiling laughter will echo through the great, wind-winnowed space._

_"And at last, on some white and wondrous dawn, we shall reach the fairy isle  
Where our hope and our dream are waiting us, and the to-morrows smile;  
With song on our lips and faith in our hearts we sail on our ancient quest,  
And each man shall find, at the end of the voyage, the thing he loves the best._

"When the sea wind blows against my face in a certain way - it calls me in a way I can't explain. That was the last verse, Teacher - ambition - or is it passion? is beckoning me in a call I dare not obey. And I like to dream that Nora is the lure (perhaps the reward?) of this call.

"I don't talk like this to anybody here at school, Teacher. If anyone in Boston were to get a hold of this letter! How my classmates would laugh at me - pummel me down on the football field I dare say. But you - you who have never left fairyland behind yourself - I know you will understand and I'm most grateful that pen and ink will let one kindred heart speak to another."

There the page ended. Little Elizabeth put it down, and waltzed to her window that looked seaward. "Oh!" she gasped. She flew back to her table and caught up the letter again, reading aloud some of the lines of the poem. But the last paragraph intrigued her most. "Who could it be, here in Boston, who speaks _my_ language?"


	2. Scope for Imagination

_A/N: By the way, the poem in the last chapter was by L. M. Montgomery._

Little Elizabeth meant to share her day's delightful surprise with her father, but found Pierce Grayson in a hurried departure as she wended her way to his library. A colleague had returned to New England sooner than he expected, and his note sounded as though he had eager business to discuss. He gave Elizabeth a quick kiss on her golden hair as she brushed against his tweed jacket, promising to be back soon.

Little Elizabeth sat down in her father's armchair, slightly disappointed. On second thought, she decided that it was a nice secret to keep to herself. She could already anticipate how Father would tease her if he saw the letter! He would suggest that it could be any of the boys from school: Froggy-eyed Jasper Dickinson, or chubby Ted Parker who tried to give her a rose last week. As if any of them could find a rhymne to save his life! Little Elizabeth shuddered - the thought took all the_ romance_ out of the occasion.

She liked the mysteriousness of the message. There was much more scope for imagination if she didn't know who had written those verses - she could pretend she was really receiving missives from a voyageur in fairyland. The thought pleased her.

She pulled her father's pen out of the stand and penned a letter:

Dearest Miss Shirley,

I received a most delightful missive from you - with a sea-song poem and blurbs of sunsets in fairyland. I am afraid you will tell me it was all a mistake - but I'd rather believe fate meant me to receive it, so I will ask you _please do not tell me how it came to be_.

I must answer his letter, though. But will you forward my answer to him, rather than give his address to me? An address - a Boston street name and a postal code - will make it all so prosaic and real. I'd rather imagine that you really do have dealings with fairyland and are sending my notes to a correspondent in a magic realm I cannot reach myself. Can you make this magic happen, Miss Shirley? And will you swear solemnly never to reveal our true identities to each other?

Three weeks later she received a reply.

"The Teacher of my youth wrote that an maiden of elfland wished to bring me news of her world, in exchange for tidings of mine. It sounds every bit a delightful proposal. There are so few of us that speak the language of fairyland, you know. I stumble daily across bouts of beauty, here in the Boston woods, that cry to be immortalized in prose or poetry. I have always been glad that I could record their messages for Teacher, and now, you.

What shall I call you, my elfin friend? How shall I imagine you? I do not know where you live, how old you are, or your name, and have been warned against asking. But that won't stop us from seeing each other as we'd rather imagine ourselves, and calling each other as we've always longed to be called. And if I can make the request - could you please call me the Poet? I am a poet - I have always longed to be a worthwhile one - and it will mean much to me if there was at least one soul who acknowledged me as such."


	3. A Friend

In the three weeks elapse between proposal and reply, a certain new excitement had entered Little Elizabeth's life. Father returned from his meeting that night with the news that his colleague had adopted a daughter from Prince Edward Island.

"I believe she is a little older than yourself, Betty. The Camerons will bring her to Boston to educate her. I do not know if you are more advanced than she - for she is older, but has only gone to an Island schoolhouse, but reads voraciously- so I'm told."

"Why. It would be lovely to know someone who loves the red roads as much as I do!" Little Elizabeth interrupted impulsively.

"I thought you would like to befriend her, too. I suggested to Cameron that perhaps you could be study companions? It will be most helpful for her, and fun for you, to relive your move here three years ago."

"I did miss the Island." Beth mused. "But I had _you._"

And father and daughter were silent for a moment in reminiscence.

"What is her name, father?"

"I don't know."

"I do hope it's something musical. Some names are just like a song, father, and some so - guttural - there's no melody to them. When will she come?"

"Mrs. Cameron will bring her in a fortnight's time, Betty, just before the start of school."

"I can't wait to meet her - I feel already that she will be, as Miss Shirley says, a _kindred spirit_. I think I will love her next best to you and Miss Shirley and the P- well, I expect to love her very well." Elizabeth finished.

---

Elizabeth obtained permission from father's housekeeper, Mrs. Claxton, to plan a welcome party for her new friend. She loved to hold parties, and she could never get enough of them after never having been permitted to attend any in the Evergreens. She had held several birthday parties at Windermere in March, but she flushed with excitement at the thought of a party in late summer, where the girls would come dressed in pretty pale muslins, and there would be just a hint of scarlet rifling the trees. She called the Camerons to schedule a party a week after their arrival, and sent out a pretty, lacy invitation to the girl with a Japanese bookmark as a token of friendship

She was even more thrilled when Miss Shelley sent back a note on cherry blossom paper, with a big cream conch shell as a gift. "I'm afraid I can't match the sophistication of your oriental bookmark, but in this shell you will hear the music of the sea, which is very dear to me. And I know that the Island sea - the salt breath in the air that I miss so much already - is a bond we will share. I can hardly wait to meet you. Cordially, N. Shelley."

They would meet at Elizabeth's party

She received the Poet's letter the morning of the party. As if her plate of excitement wasn't already full! She tucked the missive in her dress pocket, and spent the afternoon scrutinizing the state of Mrs. Claxton's hors d'ouevres, arranging the late roses into bouquets and garlands, and finally changing into her new gray silk. She loved the gentle sheen of her dress - it made her feel like a silver moonbeam - and pinned her straight golden hair back with a pearl headband. She watched the guests arrive - girls and boys of her own "set" from school, older teenagers and even college freshman of father's aquaintance who would be closer to Miss Shelley's age, and father's business friends. Her eyes darted over the faces of each of them and she wondered if any of them could possibly be "The Poet." She fingered the letter in her pocket, and thought out the reply she would write to him that night.

"I am holding a party here tonight - a gathering of fairy revelry. How I love to see the lights glistening on the faces of my friends as they crowd around the eats' table. I am too young to dance of course, but some of the girls my age are dressed almost as elegantly as the ladies. How I love to see my classmates transformed from their school day garb to garments of beauty! Beautiful clothes make you feel beautiful – and so, make you behave beautifully. Do you ever find that is the way – that it is easier to be good when you have your nice clothes on?

I am going to make a new friend tonight – nay, she is already my friend, for I have loved her before I met her. But I think I spy her at the door now – the tall, lithe creature with kind pudgy Mrs. Cameron hanging on her arm. How beautiful she is – dark haired and fair of face – how she reminds me the siren in your poem, the Poet!

Elizabeth stepped forth now to greet Mrs. Cameron with a curtsey. She smiled shyly at her new friend and introduced herself with a handshake:

"I'm Elizabeth – Elizabeth Grayson."

"Oh, Elizabeth," cried the girl gladly, enveloping Elizabeth into an embrace. "If we are to be friends – do call me Nora!"


	4. But since our hearts are small

The party lights seemed to dance around Little Elizabeth's head for a spell. Then she gathered herself. Years of living with Grandmother and the Woman had instilled in her all the Pringle politeness and dignity, softened by her own sweetness into a sort of grace and elegance.

"What a delightful name!" She replied, and chattered onwards as she lead Nora over to her groups of young girls and youths. "Why, it's one of the names that come of so many others - Eleanor, Leonora, Honor, and it reminds me of the word _Sonore_, which is French for sound."

"Do you speak French?" Nora asked eagerly.

"Mais oui, je l'etudiais depuis trois annees." replied Little Elizabeth glibly. "Father has a lot of work in Paris, and is thinking of moving there Paris one day."

"You must help me with mine. I've studied the conjugations out of an old grammar text but I still can't distinguish between and past and perfect participle." Nora laughed. "How behind I'll be in my class." She added, half frankly, half apolegetically.

"What class are you in?" Little Elizabeth queried. "I'm turning fifteen next March, so I'm only a junior at St. Agatha's Girls' Seminary."

"Oh dear!" Nora cried. "I'm nearly twenty - what an overgrown, ugly duckling I'll feel like! For I don't think I'll find myself any further in much more than the freshettes. I've only read the eighth reader, and all of Shakespeare's plays to pieces over and over again since I was sixteen. I'm writing placement examinations with the principal next week." she ended nervously.

Little Elizabeth put an arm around Nora. "I just wrote them myself last year - they aren't very difficult, only the examiners are very particular with what they want. I will help you review and give you pointers. And Mrs. Claxton makes the most mouth-watering 'hop and go fetch it's' that are the best study snacks. They're made from an Island recipe which she coaxed out of her cousin in Harmony."

---

After devouring daily doses of 'hop and go fetch it's, Nora did well enough on her exams to join Little Elizabeth's own class. Nora averred that it was the raisins in the recipe "I read somewhere, that raisins stimulate the brain." she laughed. Little Elizabeth laughed, too. But she grudged herself a little for laughing. Laughter had come to her easily since she came to Boston, but you can never truly laugh with someone and not be friends with them.

The girls found themselves frequent companions for study sessions and evening promenades. Little Elizabeth liked to best to pack a picnic to the public gardens, and stay throughout the afternoon to study their lessons. Nora suggested the shore once or twice, but Little Elizabeth had someone got an inkling that Nora was partial to the sea, and found the notion distasteful. She begged that it was too rough - too windy. She was so sweet in her obstinacy that Nora never suspected her of any selfish prepense.

"What a fascinating city Paris is." Nora poured over her text. "Its very streets are steeped in history, all the way back to Roman days and their wars with the Gauls, on the fortressed Ile de St. Jean."

"Sometimes I like to imagine myself standing there." Little Elizabeth answered dreamily. "In the shadow of the Notre Dame's haunting facade, or out into the sunlight of its age-old bridges, gazing down on the Seine and across to the quartier where Cluny and the Pantheon sit. And La Sorbonne! How I would like to study there."

"Just think of all Victor Hugo said you could see from the towers of the Notre Dame," Nora said dreamily. "The city, the University, and the town sprawling out era afte era - spire and rooftop marking each medieval settlement as it grew into the others."

"Will we go see it together, one day?" Thoughts of tomorrow had always _thrilled_ Little Elizabeth.

"Perhaps. The world is a delightful place and it beckons to me so. But do you know Kipling's lines?

_"God gave all men all earth to love,   
But since our hearts are small,   
Ordained for each one spot should prove   
Belovèd over all;"_

"I have not yet seen the world - but in my heart, our fair emerald green isle has already claimed much room."

Little Elizabeth closed her geography and watched the Swan Boats pedal by. One day, she would sail away on a distant journey. The moving waters seemed to stir herself and Nora.. herself forward and Nora nostalgically. They were very kindred in that one moment - the ripples were sunflecked but still cool. Nora was all that the muse of the Poet should be -- imaginative, inspiring, passionate, and a kindred spirit. Furthermore, if Nora was the Poet's friend -- or more!, wasn't that all the more reason that they should be good friends?

She wrote a little pensively to the Poet that night:

"Do you think, that if two people speak the same languages, their friends will find one another kindred too? Is fairyland a kingdom that only you and I know, or is it a realm that many travel into? Do we take a different journey with each traveler into those perilous seas?

"I have always wished that we could partake in the same dreams, for I find yours so charming and you understand mine so well. But I have begun to wonder: If you dream a beautiful dream, and I were to find it without you, would I find it as beautiful as you did?"


	5. Things Progress

Nora was very beautiful. The way her white eyelids flickered when you asked her a question, as though thoughtfully processing what you said. Her shapely white hands moved with such slender grace - she held a teacup as if she were showcasing a diamond, and leafed through a book like a measured pendulum. Sometimes when her silk petticoats rustled you caught a glimpse of how her long legs ended in coveted delicate ankles. Her white throat shone in the brilliant light. She had a slow, blossoming smile - pensive and beguiling.

She felt hollowly like Lizzie again, as she watched Nora. But watching Nora was all she could do tonight, for she was too young to dance, and too old to play with the children. She was at the Camerons' for a party, and Nora had asked her to come especially:

"There is someone I'd like you to meet."

Nora had crimsoned speaking that cryptic phrase. Lizzie eyed the guests from her fern-shadowed corner when she wasn't absorbed in watching Nora. She felt a faint dread clouding her curiosity as to whom Nora spoke of. Not even her father's hand, lightly caressing her hair, could assail her gloom.

"Where is Betty tonight?" he asked seriously.

"I don't know - " she answered half-wearily, glad and sad that her father noticed and sympathized with her mood. "I thought I could never be Lizzie again when we came to Boston, but she's back. I - I wish I could tell you what's wrong, father, but I'd rather keep it to myself."

"It'll only be a few years before _you_'ll be dancing, and making conquests like Nora, pet." Pierce followed her gaze and probed at the problem. "I only wish you could stay my little girl forever, but you're impatient to be in Tomorrow. I can see it beckoning to you again."

"I used to think everything I want will come true in Tomorrow - but what if you have too many hopes, or very large ones? Papa - I'm even beginning to doubt - "

"Uncertainty is the price Tomorrow comes with." Pierce intonated. "I was introduced to a young man half an hour ago who seemed to have found his Tomorrow. Extraordinarily successful for one so young - he has a head for business and Cameron took him into the bank. He is elated because he just paid off the mortgage on his mother's house today - Mrs. Bryant is a widow, and he thinks he has enough to send his younger brother to school. Obligations fulfilled, every horizon spreading open before him. What a position to be in! I envied him a little myself."

"And?" Little Elizabeth asked keenly, temporarily taken out of herself by the narrative.

"He is over there - do you see him, leaning against the marble pillar? Can you tell what the look on his face belies?"

Pierce smiled, and Little Elizabeth looked where her father pointed. He was watching someone as intently as she had been. His eyes, like her own, were magnetically drawn to the one centre of the room: Nora.

----

Lizzie was loathe to think about Nora's her love affairs. She felt very disloyal in the following days when she penned her letters to The Poet: she was crippled by the conviction that what she knew would hurt him, that by merely knowing she was complicit.

"The Camerons think very highly of Clark Bryant." Nora imparted the information as though reciting a lesson dutifully. "Young, well-to-do - he is Mr. Cameron's especial protege this winter."

"He's absolutely besotted with you." Lizzie snapped.

"I know." Nora's dark eyes clouded over.

"Is that a problem?" Lizzie asked anxiously.

"Oh, little Elizabeth, what do you think of him?" Nora asked painedly.

"I think he's a very nice young man, and would make you a queen unto the world.

"With him you would

' dwell in marble halls

with vassals and serfs at your side' "

Albeit Lizzie rattled off the quotation a little flatly.

Nora sensed the lack of conviction and dropped the subject. Little Elizabeth thought she knew what the problem was, and did not probe.

---

Clark continued to haunt Nora that winter like a shadow. When the girls loitered along Massachusetts Ave., he appeared swiftly and mysteriously out of a side street, lifting his hat affably and stopping to make stilted conversation. He mellowed into laughter and radiance if Nora deigned the slightest of responses. Though quiet and reclusive in nature, he was seldom not to be found at a social function that Nora graced. His gaze always sought hers in group events.

Several times he besseched the Graysons for help. Too shy to approach the damsel Elizabeth, Pierce brought home requests and missives from Clark for his daughter. They always began with utmost polite preambles and ended with acknowledgements of gratitude. But they were, undoubtedly, a lover's frantically tortuous thoughts:

"Could you tell me what sort of music does she like?"

"I will leave her a sheaf of flowers tomorrow - do you think orchids would suit her?"

"A volume of poetry for her Christmas gift - you who are her dearest friend and companion, would you tell me whether she prefers Keats, Parkman, or Longfellow?"

Little Elizabeth helped Clark languidly. She did not really feel like it was right to - yet she wanted to, very selfishly. As she doled out advice to the besotted, her shoulders slumped with what a very wretched friend she was being to the Poet. Sometimes she prayed desperately that Nora would like poor Clark - who was a very good sort of man - that she would choose him above anyone else. She shrank at how the Poet would be hurt, and cursed herself for being a selfish, selfish, irrational creature. It was a very convoluted state of affairs.

The gray snow fell thickly outside, silencing all thoughts. In the parlour, firelight danced heatedly and restlessly while Elizabeth attended her pile of letters.

"Dear Miss Grayson,

The disease of the lovelorn falls upon me: I have written a poem to Nora. Can you, fair maiden of angelic grace, tell me how it stands? Shall I be mocked to dire disgrace when I present my humble ballad to her?

"BELOVED, this the heart I offer thee

Is purified from old idolatry,

From outworn hopes, and from the lingering stain

Of passion's dregs, by penitential pain.

Take thou it, then, and fill it up for me

With thine unstinted love, and it shall be

An earthy chalice that is made divine

By its red draught of sacramental wine. "

A sudden fury overtook Lizzie as if a tempest unsteadied the snowfall. Who was Clark to be writing poetry to Nora - the Poet's Nora? How dare he compete? She fed the letter to the eager flames, and watched it die. The ritual seemed to purify her from all past stains. A light of determination glinted in her eyes, and Betty stood up more erectly than she had for all the winter months. She would confront Nora - confront the Poet - unveil the truth.


	6. Fetters

Would she ever see him? That was the question that filled Elizabeth with trepidation. It was a mixed blessing that she knew he was in Boston. She tortured herself with the thought that he could be anyone; she had nightmares that it was someone she knew in real life and found hopelessly prosaic.

She had sent off a short, cryptic note via Miss Shirley.

_"I think I KNOW YOUR NORA._

_She is here in Boston and an intimate friend of mine. She's everything you described - dark of hair and fair of face, with the sea on her breath and eyes. She is lovely to look at and inspiring to talk to. The very muse of your poetry - she hails from Racicot, P. E. I."_

Now she waited like an undying butterfly for the awkwardness to follow; the questions that would ultimately result in the revelation of their identities, wrecking the fairy dream of their pen friendship. Elizabeth was a shy creature. In her correspondence to the Poet she found an outlet for the depths of her soul. She could never communicate her thoughts so freely to a person who knew - and judged her in real life.

Elizabeth was so restless that she even ventured timidly to her father: Could he think of any literary young men in Boston, who were from the Island? Pierce Grayson could not, but he eyed his daughter suspisciously. He thought he recognized the agony in her eyes. That winter she was taller, slimmer, quieter. She liked to spend more time alone, less in delightful imaginary congress than in deep thoughts. She was growing very quickly, transforming into a "maiden, clothed with celestial grace," too quickly beyond his reach. Panic overwhelmed him, already he could see Beth vanishing into her beloved Tomorrow, while he sank further into the quagmire of Yesterday.

"Romance." he uttered cynically. It was twenty years since he had first met Elizabeth's mother, then a willowy lass of fifteen.

---

Spring thawed painstakingly that year. Elizabeth was weary, she thought Boston would never be washed clean of its grime. She turned fifteen; a bright age with a silken party and a sheaf of fifteen white lilies. She thought she would have liked to write to the Poet about the epoch, but she could not. She had not written the Poet since he sent back three puzzled lines "I don't know what you mean. You can't possibly know my Nora. She was only a product of my imagination, although it pains me to say so."

Elizabeth was no longer sure what the Poet meant. She was embarrassed. Maybe he thought her very presumptious; at any rate he did not sound especially interested in Elizabeth's Nora. Elizabeth didn't know how to reply, so she didn't reply at all.

That sense of closeness, born of a trust to talk about anything, vanished from their correspondence. The correspondence dissolved.

One night Nora confided to Elizabeth that she had had a lover back home. A beau of many years, with whom her bookish soul was deeply twined. In her eagerness for this new life she had forsaken him, but she thought of Rob Fletcher irrevocably whenever she came across a poem they had read together, an author they loved, a capricious sea wind that was redolent with memories for her.

Elizabeth found that she could relate. She knew what - nay, _who_ - a beloved book or thrill of nature brought to her mind.

"I love talking to Clark." Nora averred. "I can feel myself _sparkling_ whenever I am around him - it is really an exhilarating sensation. I feel clever and we converse on intelligent subjects, and I angle my chin to capture his gaze. Oh, little Elizabeth, It's all wickedly thrilling.

"But I never feel a sense of connectedness with all things, when I'm with Clark, like I do with Rob. With Rob I felt like I loved the universe gently, that I was a sister to all of this loveliness -"

She waved a lily hand at the budding trees outside Elizabeth's window.

"With Clark it is a mere backdrop for our lives, unfolding before us with every wonder and glamour. I can't tell you what I desire more."

Elizabeth wondered, too. Her girlish instinct was that Nora did not love Clark, but she did not want to say that. And if the "connectedness in all things" that Nora spoke of amounted to _love_, did that mean what she felt for the Poet was - ?

"Do you know how - _this _- makes me homesick?" Nora went on. "All winter Boston has been dazzling. But it's the eve of spring, Elizabeth! It doesn't feel right that we should be in a masonry jungle when all life is bursting forth. I want to watch it - I want to see my Island woods enfold in canopies of greenery and song, and I want to learn the mystery of the sea again. I think of a little hut flanking the boulders on the Racicot cove. And Elizabeth - my mother, my real mother is in it!"

To that Elizabeth could not relate. She had never had a mother.

"Little Elizabeth, what would I give right now to run away down a red road!"


	7. To the Island! To Shores Old and New

Every year, the Camerons went to Dalveigh, their summer home on the Island. There had they met and adopted Nora. She would return to visit for the very first time this June. Nora chattered feverishly of the Island all spring. The smallest caprices put her in mind of her home.

"I begged for you to come with us," Nora told Elizabeth. "But Mrs. Cameron isn't feeling very well this spring, and she isn't sure how large of a party she wants to entertain. We already have Clark, of course, and a lot of Mr. Cameron's business friends will join us later in the season."

Elizabeth looked lovingly at Nora. Ever since her estrangement with the Poet, she had felt more sympathetic towards Nora's woes. No longer did Nora seem the enchantress, beguiling, threatening. Rather, Elizabeth perceived that Nora was in agony at the thought of Clark and her old sweetheart Rob being brought in miles' radius of one another. Though Nora never referred to Rob Fletcher since her impassioned confession, and her calm, alabaster face seldom betrayed her, Elizabeth knew how a female heart was wont to associate all things with a singular individual. Prince Edward Island was to Nora as a field of golden flowers, recalling the Poet's "sunset land," was to Elizabeth.

So, in an exigency of sympathy, Elizabeth wrote to Miss Shirley, asking if she couldn't come visit Ingleside. Glen St. Mary was only four miles from Racicot Harbour, and an unmourned ninety miles from Summerside.

"I know it's our duty to call on Grandmother and the Woman, of course. And unpleasant as that may be," Elizabeth grimaced to her father. "it will be worth it to see Miss Shirley, won't it?"

Pierce Grayson, who admired few women in his widower's misanthrope, had admired and respected Miss Shirley wholeheartedly. He agreed that it would be worthwhile to see her redheaded, ivory loveliness again. Elizabeth did not admit that she was harbouring a secret hope that when they were on one of their sunset walks down the long, red roads, Miss Shirley would talk to her about the Poet, so that perhaps... just perhaps...

Elizabeth and Nora wiled the chill Maritime spring away, making plans for a summer on the Island. Elizabeth showed Nora the old map that she and Miss Shirley had drawn of fairyland, reciting the litany of magical place-names and imaginary landmarks. Nora especially delighted in all the different times - "lost time, play time, half-past kissing time" - her slender finger lingering over "time immemorial." But she did not like to talk of Tomorrow.

Nora said she would teach Elizabeth how to swim. Elizabeth had never been allowed such antics under Grandmother and the Woman's eyes.

Nora had a deft hand, and drew portraits of her many younger sisters to "introduce" them to Elizabeth. Elizabeth, who could not help a faraway sense of loneliness whenever Nora spoke of her large family, her mother and siblings and their jolly childhood together - Elizabeth pulled out snapshots of the young Blythe children that Miss Shirley had sent her, and told Nora loving anecdotes about each of them that Miss Shirley had written her. The stories were so vivid for Elizabeth, that it was almost as if she had met Jem, Walter, Nan, Di and "the little brown boy" Shirley.

Then Miss Shirley wrote to say that ... she couldn't have visitors until the fall. Mrs. Cameron, too, was unwell and the Cameron's sojourn was postponed until midsummer. The girls commiserated, grateful that misery had company.

At the beginning of July, Grayson and Cameron found out that they were appointed as associate directors of the firm's European branch. They would move to Paris in the fall. Elizabeth and Nora came out of mourning, and dusted their plans for something anew - France! It was a dream come true. Elizabeth would have singing lessons by a famous soprano, and Nora was to study literature at la Sorbonne. The grandeur and novelty surpassed their simple plans for Island revelry.

So when the Camerons finally departed for the Island at the end of July, Nora's anticipation did not weigh so ponderously on her. She bid Elizabeth good-bye with a light kiss. "It's goodbye to America!" Nora laughed. "We'll be sailing straight for the old world from Halifax. If you don't get to the Island before we go, I'll be sorry, but I can't be too sorry because I'll see you next in Paris in a month or two!"

Nora was not prepared for what was to come.

Elizabeth, on returning home, found a note in her mailbox announcing the birth of Bertha Marilla Blythe. It was from Dora Andrews, née Keith, whom Elizabeth still corresponded with from time to time. Dora enclosed an invitation: "Since Anne can't have you until the fall, I thought I'd asked Ralph if we wouldn't. I think a week on Prince Edward Island is too short. And pity you won't be near North America again for years! Won't you spend August with us in Avonlea?"

----

see Paul Irving's "land of the sunset" in Anne of Avonlea.


	8. Poetry and Prose

Not her months of planning with Nora, not her reminisces with her father on board the _White Gull_, nothing prepared Elizabeth for the gush of emotion she felt as they sailed up the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It was dusk; the White Sands harbour gemmed with lights, the salt tang rose in the air, and little Elizabeth could see the little triangular peninsula that was Avonlea, jutting out into the sea. A nameless feeling overwhelmed her soul like an ocean wave - the pageant of her childhood hopes and fancies surged up and called to her. Elizabeth felt what Nora was to write to her in a letter of _her_ first sight of the Island: "_The spell of the sea and the wind surged into my heart and filled it with wild happiness and measureless content._"

Little Elizabeth did not receive Nora's letter until mid August. She spent her first week idyllically on the Andrews farm by the Lake of Shining Waters. Not in idleness: as of old, Elizabeth delighted in being permitted to help out. Dora was enjoying full reign over her household, since Mrs. Harmon Andrews had passed away a year ago.

"Poor Milly," Dora laughed complacently, referring to her twin Davy's wife. "She must be having such a hard time of it, she has to do everything under Mrs. Lynde and Marilla's noses. Of course, my mother-in-law scolded me too when I first came here - she had a right to - but I tell you it was hard for her to find fault with a girl brought up by both Marilla and Mrs. Lynde, that you may tie to."

Dora was a perfect housekeeper and Elizabeth dusted, polished silver, and bleached muslin cheerfully with her. Dora let Elizabeth pick her favourite red currants, and listened to Elizabeth wax poetic about them. She taught Elizabeth how to make her famous "currant cream turnovers."

"It's one thing to talk of them_looking_ like jewels and red rubies, and another to make something real tasty out of them." Dora nodded. Between Elizabeth's artistic eye and Dora's culinary knack, the two girls concocted charming pastries that Ralph Andrews called "the bulliest crumpets ever seen in Avonlea."

For where Dora was quiet and methodical, Dora's husband Ralph was loud and jovial. He paid Elizabeth endless compliments in his easy, flirty way.

"Miss Elizabeth! You look like yer made o' sunshine, shall I call ye sunshine gal?" he had bellowed when they picked her up at the station. Elizabeth had blushed shyly, uncertain how to behave. The boys at her school were too "nice" to flirt with her. It took her a while before she realized that Ralph never meant anything by his attention to ladies.

It didn't bother Ralph that Elizabeth didn't reply. He swung his arm around his wife and pecked her loudly on the cheek. Dora, who had never known how to flirt in her life, blushed just as Elizabeth had.

All in all, little Elizabeth felt right at home amongst the Andrews. But they were very prosaic people, and after a week her moonlight soul starved for poetry.

It was in this mood that she received Nora's epistle. Racicot was seventy miles from Avonlea so the girls could not yet meet on the Island. As much as Elizabeth loved sweet Dora, she was starved for a "like-minded friend." She pinched Nora's envelope with disappointment. It was thin - Elizabeth hated thin letters, thinking shudderingly of the Poet's last. Elizabeth had a premonition that the portends of Nora's letter would be dramatic.

_"At sunset on the day of my arrival, I looked out cross the harbour to the fishing village. I was tired after her journey, andI had not meant to go over to see my parents until the morning, but suddenly I knew I must go at once. My mother was over there; the old life called to me; the northwest wind swept up the channel and whistled alluringly to me at the window of my luxurious room. It brought to m the tang of the salt wastes and filled my heart with a great, bitter-sweet yearning._

_"The Camerons had been very good to me. They had lavished every indulgence on me. In these few short months I had lived more keenly and fully than in all my life before. The Nora Shelley who went away was not, so it would seem, the Nora Shelley who came back._

_"When I looked from my window to the waves and saw the star of the lighthouse and the blaze of the sunset in the window of the fishing-houses and heard the summons of the wind, something broke loose in my soul and overwhelmed me, like a wave of the sea. I must go at once -- at once -- at once. Not a moment could I wait._

_"I was dressed for dinner, but with tingling fingers I threw off her costly gown and put on my dark travelling suit again. I left her hair as it was and knotted a crimson scarf about her head. I thought I would slip away quietly to the boathouse, get Davy to launch the little sailboat for me - and then for a fleet skim over the harbour before that glorious wind! I hoped not to be seen, but Mrs. Cameron was in the hall._

_"'Nora!' she said in astonishment._

_"' Oh, I must go, Aunty! I must go!/ I cried. I was afraid Mrs. Cameron would try to prevent my going, and I could not bear that._

_"'Must go? Where? Dinner is almost ready, and --'_

_"'Oh, I don't want any dinner. I'm going home - I will sail over.'_

_"'My dear child, don't be foolish. It's too late to go over the harbour tonight. They won't be expecting you. Wait until the morning.'_

_"'No -- oh, you don't understand. I must go -- I must! My mother is over there.'_

_Mrs. Cameron looked hurt. I felt very sorry, but I had to go._

_"Well, if you must. But you cannot go alone - no, Nora, I cannot allow it. The wind is too high and it is too late for you to go over by yourself. Clark Bryant will take you."_

_I wanted to protest but I knew it would be in vain. I went sullenly to the boathouse behind Clark. I did not want him there. He is very nice, but just then he was in my way. He does not, and never would, belong in Racicot. I wanted to go home for the first time, alone._

_"Davy launched the small sailboat and I took the tiller. I knew every inch of the harbour. As the sail filled before the wind and the boat sprang across the upcurling waves, my brief sullenness fell away. I no longer resented Clark Bryant's presence - I forgot it. He was no more to me than the mast by which he stood. The spell of the sea and the wind surged into my heart and filled it with wild happiness and measureless content. Over yonder, where the lights gleamed on the darkening shore under the high-sprung arch of pale golden sky, was home. How the wind whistled to welcome me back! The lash of it against my face - the flick of salt spray on my lips - the swing of the boat as it cut through the racing crests - how glorious it all was!_

_"I sprang from the boat and ran along the wharf home. I flung the door open: all my family were gathered for supper. They did not seem to recognize me at first_

_" 'Mother!' I cried, and buried my face in her breast._

_"The neighbours were all over afterwards and 'to see how I'd changed' - most of them seemed very disappointed that I hadn't. Old Joe Bradshaw scoffed that 'all that book-learning don't seem to have made you a mite diff'rent.' I laughed and chatted but as the night wore on I grew weary, listening for someone's footsteps. _

_"I slipped out and went for a walk along the shore. And there he was, waiting, fearing that I had changed, that I would not want to see him._

_"I cannot tell you what happened in exact words - it is too dear to me - but Little Elizabeth, Rob and I are engaged. I am going to stay on the Island and be Mrs. Rob Fletcher after all, a mere fisherman's wife. But I will be so happy. Rob and the sea are all the world to me. I cannot live away from them."_

Nora's pages were seared with passion. Elizabeth felt oddly starved for it. She tucked the letter in her coat pocket and went downstairs to pull on Dora's rubbers. She would take a walk. Avonlea was full of poetry everywhere, but Nora's letter made her yearn particularly for open shore. Ralph had driven them down the Shore Road once, which was very pretty, fringed with bracken and dotted with homesteads on the right, and the blue gulf on the left. Dora told her about a shortcut she had not yet explored.

Elizabeth found it easily. From Barry's Pond, she turned down a little footpath to the beech wood below the Dicksons'. She crossed over low-lying shore fields. The land dropped below her to meet the sea, and she clambered out onto the striped red-and-white rocks. Ah! One could breathe here. Little Elizabeth sat and pondered for a long time about the trajectory of her life that year - the advent of The Poet, the advent of Nora, the loss of the Poet, and now, the loss of Nora. Elizabeth was wont to be apprehensive; and she could not help thinking how their paths had forked: henceforth Nora would be a wife, then a mother, at any rate a chatelaine in a seaside village, not her bright companion on a Parisienne expedition.

The sun was setting, leaving a trail of gold on the breast of the sea. The sky inflamed with orange, which faded to pink, to a deepening violet that quickly began to twinkle with stars. In nature, as in humanity, change and transformation was all around her.

---

NOTE: Nora's letter is taken from "The Magical Bond of the Sea" in Along the Shore by L. M. Montgomery, with pronouns altered.


	9. The Rock Shore of Avonlea

Someone was striding down the hard strip of sand, barely out of reach of the white foam that almost lapped his feet. His lips moved as he strode. Apparently in deep converse with another realm, a smile radiated over his face ever and anon as if he was discovering new, wonderful, magical secrets. Elizabeth was familiar with the ruse. As he rounded the headland, his face came into full view.

Elizabeth decided that she _liked_ it. She had never liked a face so much. A grave face with a strong chin, into which very dark blue eyes were deeply set. She smiled at him, but he did not see her: his tall, broad shoulders were bent seawards, and his head slouched a little in deep meditation.

Presently he sat on a distant cove, and fumbled for something from his pockets. Barely sensible to the magnetic attraction she felt, Elizabeth got up, and very carelessly walked towards him. She perched herself on a nearby boulder. She leaned her cheek on her knees and immersed herself in the sunset. Gold was her hair, white her dress, and very fair and luminous was her skin. Elizabeth did not know what an ethereal picture she made against the dark cliffs in the gathering gloom.

"Hello," the young man called.

Elizabeth broke impulsively into an answering smile. "I've been watching you." she said frankly. "I did not want to break the spell of the sunset for you."

The young man smiled appreciatively. Elizabeth recognized in it something akin to her soul. They were fast friends before another word passed.

"I've always loved the sunset." he said finally.

"So have I," Elizabeth answered. "I had - have - a friend who used to imagine the sunset was really a meadow full of flowers, and I - I was spending the time, choosing a flower for each shade."

The young man looked as if he would say something, but Elizabeth went on.

"The orange are tiger-lilies, goldenrods streak through them, behind them are misty pink hydrangeas - I don't know, how well you know flowers." Elizabeth laughed apologetically.

"And the purple night is a large damask violet, with a streak of silver in its heart. I've loved flowers all my life." her friend answered strongly.

"I'm so glad." Elizabeth cried.

"Do you think it's girlish of me?" he asked laughingly, knowing that she would not. Elizabeth made a pretty reply in the negative.

"I used to get thrashed all the time when I was a boy, for loving beauty so. My classmates thought it was so milksoppish. But I couldn't help it!!" he mused. "Even my grandmother thought it was foolish to - write poetry. There were very few people I could talk to about my thoughts, so I would come away to the shore, and - have conversations with all sorts of imaginary people."

"Was that what you were doing?" Elizabeth laughed - but laughed sympathetically, because imaginary friends were a delightful thing. Almost as delightful as real kindred spirits.

"No. I was - writing poetry. I would like to be a poet, I've always known I had to be one. I just had something published last month."

"I don't think that's something you need to _become_," Elizabeth mused. "I suppose you really already are one, publications notwithstanding. You were born that way."

"Yes." the young man said appreciatively again. "You understand perfectly."

They sat in communicative silence for a while.

"I either want to ask you," Elizabeth spoke up, because she could without shattering any spells now that they were good friends, "if I could read your poetry, and if you would tell me about your people at the shore."

"I can't show you this last poem I was just writing, yet." he said regretfully. He seemed troubled as he searched for an explanation "I really would like to show _you_, sometime" - Elizabeth liked the subtle emphasis on you -"but it's because -"

"'they are apt to become feeble in the utteranace: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must kept the germinating grain away from the light.' " Elizabeth quoted.

"Yes. I will tell you about my shore people, though, and in return you must tell me about how you became acquainted with your friend of the sunset."

"My grandmother lives on the shore road, as I told you, and I lived with her in the days when I was called girlish, had a delicate mouth and chestnut girls." He exchanged an inexorable smile with Elizabeth. "I am visiting, of course - on summer vacation from college, but father and Mother Lavendar and I always spend summers at a little stone house near Grafton. It belongs to Mother Lavendar, father and Mother Lavendar were engaged there when they were only children."

"What a lovely name, 'Mother Lavendar' is," Elizabeth thrilled. "It makes me think of music, and lace, and old-fashioned scents. I love the aroma of lavendar."

"The garden at Echo Lodge - that's our summer home - is full of it. You must come see it, one day. But what I wish you could see - nay, hear - most are the echoes: if you believe in such things, they abound in the enfolding woods, and when you blow the little french horn we have, they answer like 'horns of elfland, faintly dying.'"

"I'll always believe in fairyland." Elizabeth avowed. "It makes the world so much more interesting to believe in things."

"I try to, too. Anyway, where were we? I lived with grandmother in Avonlea before father met Mother Lavendar - she is my stepmother. She took me in just after my little mother had died."

"I lived with Grandmother - actually she is really my great-grandmother - because my mother had died, too." Elizabeth said sympathetically again.

"Then you understand. Grandmother didn't understand things very well, unlike my own little mother, or even father who could whenever he tried. I was very lonely so I came here and imagined all sorts of things. I came to tryst with who I called my "rore people." I imagined a jolly pair of sailors who told me stories about all their adventures on the sea. They didn't just sail to worldly places, but to moonglades and the sun-- say, the constellations too. I imagined a dark haired girl who lived in Andrew's Cove. She wasn't a mermaid but she knew all about them. And there was a Golden Lady too - she looks rather like you. She plays her harp and is attuned to the music of the winds."

"It's very delightful." Elizabeth said. She couldn't wait to tell him about her Tomorrow.

"But then, father came back and remarried and we moved to the States. When I visited the next summer, I could barely wait to see my Rock People. I almost ran all along the coves and headlands. Then - I had to _try_ to see them, and I could only see one of them. I never had the heart to try again." his voice was deep, as if the anguish of losing his halcyon childhood still pained him. "The Rock People may still be here again somewhere, but they won't be here for me." he finished whimsically.

Elizabeth in turn kept her bargain and told him about her fanciful correspondence with a Poet and her foolish mistake that caused its end. Her friend listened attentively. His eyes looked like he understood her chagrin so well, that Elizabeth found herself pouring out her history of her life at the Evergreens with Grandmother and The Woman. Her friend learned all about Tomorrow, and the map of fairyland.

Finally the dark fell, the wind and waves whistled turbulently, and a million constellations burst forth in the night. Her friend walked with her cross-lots.

"What is your name?" he asked her as they reached the main road. Elizabeth thought there was a very blithe note in his voice. She responded in kind.

"Elizabeth Grayson of Windermere in Boston, but not for long because we're moving to Paris this fall."

The young man - looking at him in the dark, Elizabeth realized that he was not so very young, not a _boy_ at any rate, muttered something under his breath like, "Thank God I found her, just in time!"

"I'm visiting Mrs. Ralph Andrews for the month." she anticipated his next question and offered the answer.

"Oh - yes." he said vaguely, apparently mired in thought. "That is Dora Keith isn't it - she went to school with me. Give her my greetings, from Paul Irving." He clasped Elizabeth's hand warmly before he let her turn into Dora's gate.


	10. Epilogue

"I''ve never fallen in love at first sight before." Little Elizabeth told Anne Blythe. They were walking down a long red road again, fragrant and alluring in the warm September afternoon. Elizabeth had a tale to confide in her beloved Miss Shirley.

"At school, the boys who are considered 'handsome' behave horridly. All the girls in my class rave about them, but I didn't think it would be very comfortable to like someone just because they had nice features. I much preferred Nora's way, of loving someone because your love for them had grown out of a friendship."

"That's the way it was with me." Anne said.

"But I liked Paul's looks so much the minute I saw him. And he turned out to be just as nice as his looks. I really didn't know you could have such perfection, in a 'flawed world.' " Elizabeth crimsoned, and Anne agreed.

"You can imagine my joy when I found out he was The Poet, and I had really known him all along. I asked to see his poetry - I never felt shy around him at all, not from the minute we began talking - isn't that surprising, Miss Shirley?"

"It only shows that you are kindred spirits." said Anne.

"So he left a notebook on Dora's doorstep at the end of the week, just before he went back to Echo Lodge. We had become such good friends in the meantime - no, we were good friends the minute we met. I read some of the poems and recognized them, Miss Shirley! There was one on Nora, and one on the garden of the sunset, and half a dozen others that I already knew by heart. And then I realized who he must be. I could hardly believe it.

"I told Dora that Paul had invited us to Echo Lodge, so since it was a quiet day before harvest, she asked Ralph if he wouldn't drive us over. I told her that there were wild strawberries in the woods near Echo Lodge. Dora was so eager to pick them, and Ralph teased her all the way, saying that she was sweet on Paul when she was a little girl. I realized all over again how much older Paul was than me.

"Echo Lodge is fairyland, Miss Shirley. I had never seen a place so full of _yesterday_ and so steeped in _magic_. I think if Nora hankers for the sea, I will be homesick for the Irving's woodland glade when I am in Paris. I told Paul that I should like to live there always.

"Paul showed us the echoes and when we were tired of that ,we all went to Mr. Kimball's back woods to pick strawberries. Dora decided to make her turnovers right there for the Irvings, but Paul and I lingered in the garden. I was so happy, Miss Shirley! I had never been so happy - it frightens me. We were under the willow where Mr. and Mrs. Irving had plighted their troth as children, and where they were married.

"I told Paul that I now knew he was the Poet I had corresponded with and counted amongst my dearest friends. He embraced me, then and there, for a long time.

"Ralph teased me all the rest of the summer.

'Oh if I could write o' poetry,

the ladies that would be after me!'

He makes very bad rhymes." Elizabeth and Anne cringed.

"Even Mr. Irving teased, and he is such a nice, kindly gentleman. I find something about his features very interesting to look at - the steady face and massive silver hair - he looks majestic. He'd look at Paul and I so wistfully - I would take your shortcut from the Green Gables woods back there almost every afternoon when it wasn't too hot to walk four miles- reminisce how he was betrothed at age nine. I took father to Echo Lodge when he took the train up to Avonlea - father has been using the branch office at Flying Cloud in Summerside, to work from, since we came to the Island. He knows Mr. Irving slightly and was friends with Paul's 'little mother.' They had such a conversation - a political debate, I think. Paul and I stayed in the room for awhile, but we didn't truly enter into the sprit of it, thinking of Tennyson's lines

what is it all but a struggle of ants

in the gleam of a million million suns?

Isn't it strange that all the poetry I've loved has so much more meaning now that I can share it with Paul? Our fathers are so alike - and Paul and I have had such similar childhoods."

"Yes - you both know that with an imagination, you can never really be lonely." Anne smiled gently.

"Do you know, that Dora smiled at me _meaningfully_ all month? I'm glad you don't smile at me like that, Miss Shirley. She let me wear her wedding ring for a day - it is a lovely little sapphire - and she got out her wedding dress to show me. 'I was married at seventeen,' she said. Fifteen isn't far off, was what she implied."

"So are you going to get married, my Little - I can't help call you _little_, so, please forgive me - little Elizabeth?" Anne asked seriously.

"No - _no!_" Elizabeth laughed. "I will get married some day, but I haven't any plans for it now." She looked her beloved Miss Shirley in the eye. "When I do, you will be the first to know."

Elizabeth couldn't help but quirk up her lips devilishly at Anne's puzzled stare. When had Elizabeth learn to smile like that? Anne thought. This young creature, radiating with happiness, was not the wistful child she had bid good-bye to at Windy Poplars.

"Paul is eight years older than me." Elizabeth explained gravely. "That's too old - for fifteen, and twenty four. So we've promised not to promise anything just now." Anne caught the look of pain that crossed the young sweetheart's face even as she mentioned the words. "I am going to Paris to study, and Paul will finish his professorship in literature in Boston. I may not see him for years."

Anne told Elizabeth how she admired her bravery.

"As Paul says, my soul is growing older every day, and his is growing younger. Someday, after many years, we'll meet." Elizabeth reassured Anne and herself.

"In the meantime, we'll continue writing letters!"


End file.
